Jean Baudrillard’s “Simulacra and Simulation”
Jean Baudrillard was a major influence on the postmodernist movement in literature and art. It was an era characterized, in part, by the rejection of absolute reality and the need to recognize flaws within society. In his essay, “Simulacra and Simulation”, Baudrillard does just that: according to the text, there is no absolute reality because we all have “simulations” of our own reality, stemming from our individual ideology, mainly of money and materialism. Also, our knowledge of reality is skewed by our knowledge of language, and this knowledge forms our perceptions of that reality. Baudrillard argues we have lost touch with real value as a result, only seeing life only through a subjective lens. By analyzing many philosophers who preceded Baudrillard, a clear picture of how he formulated his ideas emerges. One can see the influence of Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche on Baudrillard’s work. Marx was a major proponent of “calling out” societal problems, although he mainly focused on wage gaps and the negative effects of labor on the populus. Nietzsche was one of the first philosophers to reject the idea of an absolute reality. Both advocated for using your own will and power to alter how society operates. Postmodernism was also influenced by empiricists like Immanuel Kant and Mary Wollstonecraft, but in a different way. Empiricists sought to identify reality for what is was, in absolute terms. They saw society as more of a fixed concept, with only the possibility of gradual change. One can argue postmodernism rose in popularity following the empiricists simply because there was very little societal change during empiricism. Postmodernists called for societal upheaval instead of slight modifications. Another influence on this work involves one of the world’s most famous psychologists, Sigmund Freud. Freud championed a concept called existentialism, which focused on the individual as a “master of their own fate” in a sense. He argued the unconscious mind influenced subjective reality by changing our perceptions through the complex processes of the human brain. Thus, we are able to see ourselves as a separate entity from society as a whole, and perceive the world through an individual lens. This relates to Baudrillard’s idea of our simulation of reality being caused by our perceptions and values at work, shifting away from previous ideas of collective societal thought. A later philosopher, Louis Althusser, proposed that our ideology perpetuates certain behaviors that reinforce the ideology in a reciprocal manner. Again, the idea of an individual reality is analyzed. Althusser portrayed ideology in a negative light, saying it created an illusion of reality. This is very similar to Baudrillard’s ideas of people create simulations of reality based on their ideology, and how there really is no absolute reality as a result. Althusser argued our ideology and subjective reality are a result of a material attitude, which allows individuals to freely choose the concepts they believe in. This ties back to Marx and Nietzsche, some 200 years prior, and their ideas of an individual being able to control their own lives and the outcomes of societal movements. Baudrillard and a contemporary, Jean-François Lyotard, argued in favor of postmodernism as the antithesis of absolutes, relying on personal beliefs and values of the individual to create personal mantras and dogmas. “Blanket statements” of truth were a detriment to the advancement of society because they offered little room for ongoing debate and counterarguments. Only through performativity, or behavior that institutes a “true” concept of an individual’s life, could any subjective truth really be obtained. Through a short analysis of prior text, one can see how Baudrillard's work was influenced by many ideas and concepts introduced to philosophy throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. By Mike Hill Category:Baudrillard, philosophy, postmodernism, Marx, Nietzsche, empiricism, existentialism, absolute reality, simulation, simulacra